


Rough Translation

by ChocoChipBiscuit



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Cunnilingus, F/F, Multiple Orgasms, Oral Sex, Size Difference, Size Kink, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 08:41:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12767250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocoChipBiscuit/pseuds/ChocoChipBiscuit
Summary: Adaar speaks slow and deliberate, with a deep rumble that resonates through Lace's belly. It sends all her squishy bits in gentle vibration, like Lace's heart might go untethered and offer itself on her tongue. This woman is uncharted terrain, and Lace would love to map her history.





	Rough Translation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [systemdreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/systemdreams/gifts).



" _Woof_ ," Lace doesn’t say. She does not say this, because while she definitely _worked_ in a barn, she was not actually _raised_ in a barn. She won't be the dwarf country rube gawking at the Inquisitor.

But oh, there is just _so much_ to gawk at.

Inquisitor Adaar is— not a Qunari, she made that very clear, but a Vashoth. She is also the tallest woman Lace has ever met, with a skin washed grey like mountain stone. Her hair is cut in stiff salt and pepper bristles, her nose crooked as if broken and never quite set right. Her skin carries scars, thick ridges of keloid crawling up her arms and across her knuckles, and her voice trails unfamiliar accents. Adaar speaks slow and deliberate, with a deep rumble that resonates through Lace's belly. It sends all her squishy bits in gentle vibration, like Lace's heart might go untethered and offer itself on her tongue. This woman is uncharted terrain, and Lace would love to map her history.

The first time Adaar shakes her hand, Lace has to resist the urge to stroke that enormous palm, to trail her thumb across the sharp points of Adaar's talons. Adaar's nails are thick and capped with brass, and Lace is half-afraid to ask whether they are jewelry or weaponry.

Still. Despite those impressive nails, Adaar keeps two fingers on each hand filed short.

The feverish speculation keeps her warm for many nights.

 

Adaar has maps under her tongue, long roads and distant shores in every vowel and consonant. Lace has heard her speak a blunt Tevene with Krem and Dorian, a liquid Rivaini rumble that startled a sea captain into doffing her hat and bowing, stiff phrases of formal Orlesian, and a smattering of Elvish when speaking with the Dalish, punctuated mostly with open-mouthed smiles to acknowledge her limited vocabulary.

Once, Lace asks Adaar how she came to know so many languages.

Adaar sits at the edge of a cliff above the Storm Coast, brass talons tapping damp rock and feet dangling. The air is full of salt and sharpness, the world washed stark in blues and greys between surf and sand. She chews a sprig of mint, jaws working slowly. She's always chewing something, whether a piece of straw or a leaf of mint, and Lace has caught her teaching children how to make screeching whistles from long grass.

Lace stands back a firm few feet, enough to stay talking without venturing too close to the edge.

Adaar gestures to her own mouth, draws her thumb and forefinger together in a pinching motion. "My mother. Her lips, shut they were sewn. So she told me to never stop speaking." She smiles, twisting a scar at the edge of her mouth. "So, our name she chose. 'Adaar,' for the mighty voice of cannons." Adaar lets out a great booming laugh, like thunder across the waves, and pats the ground beside her in invitation. "We traveled much, when I was young. Few places hospitable to those with horns. I learned much."

Lace shakes her head, staring over the distance. Seabirds call, circling high overhead. Below— _far_ below— the waves beat off the rocks.

"Fear of heights, you have?" Adaar asks, still smiling. This close, Lace can see that Adaar's tongue is dark and oddly pointed. Which is another thought to file away with that speculation about Adaar's nails, but—

"Yes!" Lace squeaks.

But that's not why her heart's racing when Adaar rises, this mountain of a woman who could block the sun, and takes her hand.

"I wish to never fright you, Scout Lace Harding."

 

"Yours," Adaar says simply, bent on one knee and offering a bouquet of white and yellow flowers bound in blue ribbon. Her magnificent horns are capped in brass and laced with a matching blue ribbon.

Lace tries not to swallow her teeth, her blush itching its way across the back of her neck.

"Ambassador Montilyet sends these with regards for your service," Adaar adds, smiling.

Lace manages a strangled, "Oh. Thank you. Thank her.” Her heart drums her ears, faintly audible despite the low roar of the nearby tavern.

"I volunteered to deliver," Adaar says. Her smile broadens, cheek to cheek and achingly bright.

"That is very kind of you," Lace squeaks, taking the bouquet. Her hands brush Adaar's, pale icicles next to the radiant heat of Adaar's skin. No one's ever given her flowers outside of courtship before, and Lace has only given flowers to a few pretty girls, one pretty boy, and her mother when Mama Harding wanted something pretty for the dinner table. This close, Lace knows Adaar smells of warm leather and fresh sweat, plus a bright-metal tang that tingles the back of her nose. Lace will look absolutely _ridiculous_ if she just stands here sniffing the Inquisitor so she buries her nose in the flowers instead.

Adaar says something in Orlesian, with that deep voice that rumbles through Lace's belly like hidden lava. Or magma.

Lace can judge sheep for a showing, can number the permanent teeth of an animal at one, two, and three years of age, can identify faults in conformation and make remedies for most common ear infections, but these were all things she _learned_. Practical knowledge, passed through long days on the pasture and careful chalkboard lessons. She's never felt any connection to the Stone, was born on the surface into bright daylight streaming through an open window, can't distinguish basalt from granite from just another gray rock. She knows there is a difference between lava and magma but can't for the life of her say what it _is_.

All she knows is this: Heat. Strength. Power.

Adaar is all of these, and Lace would love to learn her like chalk on slate.

Lace has been blinking at Adaar and it must look like confusion, since Adaar furrows her magnificent brow and tries again in Trade tongue.

"’The flowers are lovely, but you are their sun.’" Her eyes glitter, dark and magnificent, and the sun casts tiny shadows in the bristles on her scalp. There are fine lines at the edges of her mouth, echoes of past smiles, and subtle creases between her brows.

The words may stumble in translation, but the flattery is clear.

"You honor me," Lace murmurs, because what else can she say with her heart reeling?

 

Somehow, it feels like they always return where they started— it's another clear day in the Hinterlands, the air fresh with pine and druffalo, the wind stirring the grass. The world is so much bigger than when she left, and Lace knows that places cannot be pinned to maps. Lace thinks Adaar would be a willing guide to her own hidden depths, her quirks of landscape and geography, but Lace's tongue turns to pebbles at the thought of even starting that conversation.

Adaar sits on a stump, rubbing ointment onto her horns. The smell is sharp, fragrant, something like lemon and rosemary. Her broad thumbs and brass-capped talons work it slowly into the skin, focusing on the thick ridges where skull and horn join. Adaar's eyes are shut, face relaxed as she hums an unfamiliar melody. Maybe this is one of the reasons that Adaar keeps those two nails short on each hand, allowing her to rub small circles over the tender areas of thinner flesh.

Adaar opens her eyes, cat-slow and lazy. Smiles.

Lace is used to this by now, her heart doesn't stutter up her throat the way it once did, but it still tingles her down to the bone.

"My sister would do this for me, as child," Adaar says, taking another finger's worth of ointment from the jar. She dots it along the curve of her horns, using her palms to smooth them over the bone.

Adaar's sister isn't here, obviously. And Lace can't imagine Adaar asking the Iron Bull for this, so...

"Would you like help?" Lace offers.

Adaar's smile broadens, warm and easy. The sun glints off her sharp teeth, casts deep shadows on the scar curling her lip. "Yes. But only because you are not my sister."

Lace cannot quite parse that sentence, but blushes all the way around her neck at the heat in Adaar's eyes, the invitation in her smile.

"Lace, I wish it clear. Customs are different, but I wish to court you. Language is fickle, broken thing, but I prefer words when I can." She does not get up, is still sitting on the stump with her elbows on her knees, but oh. Lace must have come closer, drawn like a bee to the flower, because when Adaar raises her hand, her enormous palm almost the size of Lace's face, she strokes one of those blunted fingers down the side of Lace's cheek, curling under to touch the soft skin of the neck before withdrawing. "If not to your liking, then—”

"But it _is_ ," Lace interrupts, both hands tight around Adaar's wrist. "I just can't— I kept wondering what someone like you would see in someone like me, and now—"

"I see strong heart, gentle touch, skill in all you do. And freckles like constellations in the southern sky."

And if that isn't the soppiest, prettiest thing anyone has ever given Lace— more than flowers and poetry and ribbons, well. Lace will eat Adaar's entire jar of horn balm.

 

Surely there is no invitation more blatant than this, so Lace brings a bottle of sweet red wine and an entire blackberry pie to the Inquisitor's quarters. Better to move bold and sure than to let this gutter out like a slow-burning torch.

She knocks at the door, calls 'hello?' and simmers on her heels, knees jittering beneath her leggings. This might be too forward, perhaps, but if nothing else at least they can laugh their way through the bottle of wine and Lace can kiss purple juice from the edge of Adaar's mouth and—

All those thoughts melt away as Adaar opens the door, grey and gleaming. She has on comfortable trousers and a breastband, wearing them casually as if this is her normal attire when she isn't in full armor or wearing the more formal garments of her official role as Inquisitor. Surely there is no lascivious intent, nothing so forward as if Lace were to show up in nothing but her lace underthings or that horrific Orlesian architecture they call _lingerie_ , but Lace's mouth goes dry anyway. Adaar's a landscape of a woman, hills of rippling shoulders and broad plains of her chest, narrowing down to the divots of her hips and traveling lower to the delta of her thighs, all scoured with rivers of keloid and the light catching on the faint brush of hair over her forearms and trailing down past her navel...

"Shall we eat pie?" Adaar says warmly.

Lace starts blushing out of instinct, unsure whether it's a misunderstanding of language or a deliberate pun, but Adaar's grin broadens and Lace catches on in time to giggle, “Before or after dessert?"

"I prefer before. It stimulates appetite," Adaar says, taking pie and wine from Lace's hands and cocking her head in invitation.

Lace follows Adaar into her quarters, shutting the door behind them. She latches it for good measure, because she might just _murder_ anyone who interrupts and then it'd be a shame if the Inquisitor had to arrest her for it.

It's a lavish room, displays set up with model ships and maps of all Thedas, notched swords hung on display and while Lace could spend a good while simply gawking over all the bits and pieces of Adaar's life, Adaar places the food on the nightstand and that directs Lace to the bed. It's absolutely enormous, big enough to sleep an entire family, but as Adaar sprawls back, arm spread in invitation, it becomes very clear that this is perfectly sized for just one Adaar.

Plus a guest, of course.

Adaar pats the mattress, her head propped up on a hard, rolled pillow that keeps her horns away from the softer cushions. "Try the sheets? They are very soft." She waggles her eyebrows.

Lace laughs, undoing her boots and kicking them off before wriggling onto the bed. Her laughter turns to a surprised giggle as she buries her feet under the covers, squirming under them. "They _are_ soft!" she exclaims, and it's all she can do not to rub her legs like a cricket against the fabric. They're not silk, Lace isn't _that_ much of a rube, she knows what silk feels like, but these are some of the finest-woven cotton she's ever felt. Lace sheds her clothes faster than she's ever done in her life, emerging from under the blankets only long enough to toss them to the side. She stays in her underthings, because naked feels like too fast a step while Adaar's still clothed, but she rolls around in raptures of bare skin against clean sheets. The fabric bunches against her hips as she rolls side to side, then buries her face into the pillow with a luxurious sigh.

Adaar kisses Lace's forehead, brass claws cool against Lace's chin. "I was the same, first time I slept here," she confesses. "Josephine said, 'Adaar! Try!' and I fought like mule. _Stubborn_. Did not see why mercenary captain need to sleep like noble. But, ah!" She gives a long shudder of delight, wriggling beneath the covers so her hip just touches Lace's. "So good. I am spoiled."

"Don't worry, I'll keep you humble," Lace chuckles, nuzzling up to Adaar's shoulder. Lace rarely feels small, even next to humans— short, sure, but never small. Having a low center of gravity just means it's easier to knock others off their ass. Only Adaar makes her feel small like this. Not fragile, not delicate, but— compact. Like Adaar could fit Lace in the palm of her hand. Lying down, they're the same height, more or less. Adaar is still bigger, of course, but it takes away that dizzying sense of scale where Lace feels like she'd need a spyglass to glimpse Adaar's face.

Now it's just biceps bigger than Lace's thighs and a mouth perfectly shaped for kissing.

Adaar seems content for Lace to lead, so Lace starts by kissing her ear, her jaw. Kisses the corner of her mouth, lips warm against the smooth line of Adaar's scar, presses together in warm exploration. Adaar tastes faintly of mint, sweet and warm. Her breath stirs against Lace's cheek, a soft sigh of welcoming as her mouth parts.

Lace doesn't care for too much tongue in a kiss, so she stays with soft nibbles, her lips drawn over her teeth and once— daring— to use a tiny edge of tooth to tug Adaar's lower lip into her mouth. Adaar rumbles laughter, an immense body-quake of joy as Lace pulls away, pressing flower-bud kisses to Adaar's throat, kissing the line of tendon beneath the jaw and tasting the salt and metal of Adaar's skin. Lace used to think that faint metal tang was from all the armor Adaar wears, worn so close it permeates her skin, but perhaps it's part of her in the same way as the horns on her head or the teeth in her mouth. Adaar is hard edges and padded muscle, bone and sinew. Her stretch marks ripple silver against the grey of her skin, caressing her biceps and under her arms, broad strokes down the curve of her belly.

And if Lace is awed by Adaar's body, well. Adaar seems just as enchanted with Lace.

When Lace sits astride Adaar's chest, Adaar looks up at her with dark eyes, rests an immense hand on Lace's hip. She squeezes gently, brass nails dimpling Lace's skin— not delicately, as if she's afraid of breaking Lace, but as if Lace deserves gentleness. Lace shivers at the shock of cool metal against her flesh, but Adaar soothes the cold-prickles with a warm press of her palms, all her calluses worn to soft leather.

Lace can't help it. She giggles.

"Copper for your thoughts?" Adaar murmurs.

"Your hands. They're lovely," Lace says, smiling. "I was just wondering— if you use your horn balm for your hands, or udder cream like the dairy farmers do."

"Horn balm." Adaar takes Lace's hand, guiding it to the base of her horns. Her eyes flutter shut with a warm sigh as Lace starts rubbing, lightly scratching her fingers across the ridge where the bone juts from the scalp. "Spend days with sword. Spend nights with love. Both use hands." She moans as Lace rubs tiny circles against the scalp, mimicking what Lace saw Adaar doing with her own horns.

"What does that feel like?" Lace asks.

Adaar chuckles. "It is good. It is not... it is not good like sex, no. But it is intimate. Like massage, or kiss on cheek. And like kiss, or massage, can be sex. Or lead to sex."

"Would you like it to?"

Adaar laughs, opening her eyes and propping herself on her elbows. She catches Lace with one hand as Lace tips back, in an effortless show of strength. "You are guest in my chambers. Tonight, I treat you first."

"And tomorrow?" Lace dares.

Adaar grins, ear to ear. "Tomorrow is tomorrow. Tonight is now."

They undress each other with gentle touches, Adaar laughing as one of her talons catches in the delicate lace of Lace's underthings, but Lace squirms free and tosses it aside.

Lace straddles Adaar's mouth, clutching the headboard as Adaar squeezes her ass. Adaar licks and tongues at Lace with her entire mouth, making love to all of Lace's wet cunt in one long lap of tongue, then a squeeze of her lips and teeth, tugging the coarse curls of Lace's hair to zag her tongue through the folds. She buries her nose against Lace's belly, and Lace is afraid of smothering Adaar between her thighs until Adaar chuckles and pushes into her with a long dip of her tongue. Lace moans, biting her wrist to smother her cries, but Adaar shakes her head, horns knocking the headboard, and mumbles something that might be "more," or "louder," but sounds more like "mnougher" from under Lace's body.

Lace takes the hint though, panting through her open mouth as Adaar brings her to orgasm, one long wave of toe-curling screams and a strangled cry as Lace comes again, and Lace doesn't even try for more than one when it's just her and her hand on those cold nights in her bedroll but oh it feels good, so good. She doesn't think she has another one in her but Adaar keeps going and it's good, it's intense, and—

Suddenly it falls from good to irritating, Adaar's tongue a relentless pressure against her clit and Lace shudders and rolls off her into a sweaty tangle of limbs and sheets. Her hair's gone loose from its braid, stuck to the back of her neck and frizzing all about her in fly-away strands, but Adaar smiles at her like she's the very picture of perfection. Adaar's lips and chin are slick and shining, wet with sex. She licks her lips, quirking an eyebrow with a wordless question.

"I'm good, I feel good," Lace laughs. She could curl up and nap in the curve of Adaar's shoulder, could just as easily go to sleep lulled by sex and soft sheets, but oh. No sense in wearing out her welcome when she's barely started, so she squirms between Adaar's thighs, tugging the covers back so she can study Adaar.

Adaar's hair is salt and pepper down here too, which Lace finds inexplicably _adorable_. All of Adaar's anatomy is as wonderfully, enormously scaled as the rest of her, dark and full. She kisses the join of Adaar's thigh, where leg meets groin, and tugs her thumbs over Adaar's labia to reveal the lush folds within. Adaar's clit is the size of a ripe strawberry, and Lace takes the whole thing into her mouth with a swirl of her lips, sucking with her lips wrapped to the root and her tongue fluttering at the tip.

Adaar groans, squirming and gripping the headboard. Lace risks glancing up, admiring the way Adaar's elbows jut and her arms stand out in sharp cords of muscle, the way her mouth hangs open and her tongue curves over her lip as she moans.

"Do not be gentle," Adaar grunts, chest heaving as she arches, twists. Lace grabs onto the thick pad of Adaar's thighs to keep from being tossed aside, and Adaar shudders as she coaxes herself back into stillness. "I like all mouth. Hard tongue, soft teeth. If very excited, if close— hard tooth. Little nibbles on clit, on lips. Fingers in cunt."

"Anything you don't like?" Lace asks, pulling her mouth from Adaar's clit with a wet pop.

Adaar laughs, deep and rumbling. "Don't like if you stop."

Lace laughs too, diving back to Adaar's clit. She rolls her lips over her teeth, using that blunted edge to pinch and tug. She pulls up the hood of Adaar's clit with a thumb, pressing her tongue into hard flicks, and uses her other hand to slick a finger over Adaar's wet opening. Lace would normally start slow, just one finger until she could slip a second in, but Adaar's so big, slick and practically gushing down Lace's wrist, so Lace uses two. Crooks, dips, slides them until— ah, yes. Adaar's wonderfully easy to read, giving a long moan as Lace finds that spot to press and rub. Lace tries to work a rhythm with her hands and mouth, sucking hard as she eases on her fingers, then switching into a push-pull rhythm of sensation. She adds another finger, and that's so easy that Lace adds a fourth, Adaar's walls clenching hard but without any sort of resistance. Lace thinks she could try her entire hand, maybe, but that's an adventure for another time as Adaar bucks against Lace's mouth with a near-bruising force, her cunt sending ripples all up Lace's fingers as she comes with a drenching gush of slick.

Lace is about to keep going, try to mimic what Adaar gave her, but Adaar shakes her head and pulls her knees back. "No. Is good." So Lace stops, and dabs her mouth against the sheets. Adaar shows no such daintiness, instead grabbing a pillow and blotting her face with an exaggerated wriggle.

"We've gotten your nice sheets all filthy," Lace sighs, leaning against Adaar's shoulder. They're still slick and sweaty, and Lace is afraid they might just stick together if they try to get any closer.

Adaar chuckles, trailing her brass talons up Lace's belly. The metal is warm now, or at least warm enough Lace doesn't shiver at the touch. "Can wash sheets."

"Mm." Lace wriggles into the mattress. Even damp and smelling of sex, they're still luxurious. Adaar's even being gallant enough to take the wet spot, which Lace is pretty sure must be directly under her ass. "Or can put a towel down."

"Towel?" Adaar bats her eyelashes. "I am _Inquisitor_ , was not raised in barn!"

Lace's plans for falling asleep quickly devolve into a tickle-fight, Adaar's laughter pealing long into the night.


End file.
